Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  Griffiths, an honest girl of impeccable character, had been really fond of Boshell and she had absolutely no reason whatsoever to lie to the police. Little did she know, her willingness to assist would later result in her facing ruin. Sean Buckley, who the other witnesses had also mentioned, had made his statement after the police raided his flat in error. He had left the group early in the evening and had had no contact with Boshell and so proved to be of little use to the investigation. Walsh had spent the evening in Griffiths’ company and so when he made his statement, unsurprisingly it turned out to be almost identical in content to hers.

  When officers visited Clair Sanders and asked her to give an account of her movements on the relevant night, she did so and agreed with everything that Alvin had said in his statement. However, for reasons known only to Clair Sanders, she refused to sign the declaration on the statement that stated that her testimony was true to the best of her knowledge.

  Within weeks of the murder, Boshell’s funeral took place at Pitsea Crematorium near Basildon. The hearse carrying Boshell’s coffin passed the last resting places of Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe, two victims of the infamous Essex Boys murders who were buried as they lived, side by side. Dean Boshell’s dream of being just like one of the ‘big boys’ had finally come true. He was young, dead and being buried full of bullet holes; just like his heroes. Bonded by blood, three young men laid in a cemetery long before their time.

  Nearly four months after his initial doorstep interview, Gordon Osborne was asked to make a further witness statement. Unlike his first rather vague recollection of the night of the murder, Osborne was suddenly able to recall events with extreme clarity.

  ‘I went to bed about 2100 hrs,’ he said. ‘My bedroom is at the rear of my house and this overlooks the allotments. At about 2300 hrs I was awoken by the sound of two or three shots coming from the direction of the allotments. My bedroom window is always open and I got up to look out of the window towards the allotments but could not see anything as it was pitch black. I can say from my experience in the armed forces that the shots I heard were from a handgun and not a shotgun. I did not see anything at all that night. The following day I found out that a person had been found dead on the allotments.’

  Osborne claimed he had heard two or three shots, which were consistent with the number of gunshot wounds that Boshell had suffered. Detectives, therefore, assumed that the shots Osborne had heard were the shots being fired into Boshell. They thought it would be unlikely that he would be mistaken after boasting that, because of his military training, he could distinguish the sound of one particular firearm from another. It therefore followed that Boshell must have met his death at around 2300 hrs.

  The police had always harboured a niggling doubt about Alvin’s story regarding the loss of his mobile phone. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence that he had just happened to lose it on the very day Boshell died. The fact that Alvin had replaced the phone so early the following morning was equally suspicious. Most people would search high and low before accepting their handset was truly lost before replacing it.

  Curious as to why Alvin might not wish his phone to be examined, detectives were soon able to discover his number by simply asking his friends for it. Boshell’s mobile phone was also missing, but C.J. McLaughlin, who had been in Spendiff-Smith’s flat on the evening of the murder, had told the police that Boshell had borrowed his phone at 2032 hrs to call a friend that he was going to meet.

  Detectives retrieved the number Boshell had called from McLaughlin’s mobile and soon established that it belonged to Alvin’s missing phone. This was the first real evidence that linked Alvin to Boshell on the night he died. Officers were extremely encouraged by the breakthrough because Alvin had claimed that he had not seen or spoken to Boshell that day. The icing on the detectives’ cake was that CCTV footage, seized from within the Woodcutters Arms, showed Alvin answering his mobile phone at the precise time that Boshell had made his call. The decision by police to gather all of the CCTV footage they thought might be relevant, proved to be an extremely significant and constructive one. At 2100 hrs on the night of the murder, cameras had recorded Boshell and C.J. McLaughlin walking to Woodgrange Drive in Southend, and waiting outside the Lidl store for Boshell’s friend to arrive. At 2115 hrs, CCTV at the Woodcutters Arms recorded Alvin leaving the premises.

  C.J. McLaughlin had told police that at 2126 hrs Boshell had telephoned his friend’s mobile from a public telephone situated on Woodgrange Drive. Telephone records revealed that this call had also been made to Alvin’s phone. McLaughlin told the police that Boshell’s friend had turned up, not long after Boshell had made the call, in a red car. Boshell had got in the vehicle and called out, ‘See you tomorrow,’ before being driven away. Detectives knew that Alvin drove a red Audi convertible. There was real excitement among officers involved in the investigation. Alvin appeared to be lying about his whereabouts after leaving the Woodcutters Arms. He said that he had gone home to drop his car off, but the police now had evidence that he had driven to Southend to pick up Boshell.

  Osborne’s evidence, that he had heard three shots approximately two hours after Boshell had been seen leaving Southend alive, could have put Alvin in a very awkward position had it not been for Griffiths, Percival and Walsh’s evidence. They had all made statements in which they had said Alvin was at the flat between approximately 2230 hrs and midnight. If the phone records were correct, Boshell had left Southend at around 2130 hrs, so he would have arrived at the allotments before 2200 hrs. Gordon Osborne had heard the shots around 2300 hrs. Detectives believed that Alvin had to be lying.

  Despite their best efforts, detectives could not find any discrepancies in the alibi that Alvin and his friends had given for the time of the shooting and so, for a while, the investigation ground to a shuddering halt.

  Six months after Boshell’s murder, Alvin married his first love, Clair Sanders. It was a rather lavish affair, funded in part by sections of the local community. That’s Alvin’s drug clientele. Among the guests were the Percival family, Kevin Walsh and Alvin’s good friend Tony Staunton. When he had heard about the wedding and asked Alvin where his invitation was, Alvin had laughed and said, ‘You can have Boshell’s. He won’t be needing it.’ Guests at the event have said that they had never seen Alvin looking so happy. Having out-foxed the police, expanded his drug-dealing empire and married the girl of his dreams, Alvin probably never had been. Happiness, as we all know, doesn’t last forever.

  On April Fool’s Day, Alvin was arrested at gunpoint in possession of a kilo of cocaine. The arresting officers were members of the Boshell murder inquiry team rather than regular drug squad officers. Alvin couldn’t be sure if the police had followed him from where he had collected the drugs. If they had, he knew that several of his associates would soon be joining him in custody. He did think it highly unlikely that officers investigating Boshell’s murder would stop him two years after the event, for a random spot check and just happen to be filming his arrest with a hand-held camcorder, as these officers had done. The likelihood was, therefore, that they had been watching him for some time. Feeling nervous and dreading what questions might lay ahead, Alvin was transported to Basildon police station, from where he immediately contacted his solicitor. Several hours later, when his solicitor had arrived, Alvin, who was unaware if any of his associates were in custody, was interviewed. He refused to answer any questions. Instead, he read out the following prepared statement:

  ‘I would like to confirm that I was in possession of a quantity of cocaine when I was arrested. I had fallen into debt with loan sharks from whom I had borrowed £15,000 to finish refurbishments at my house. I fell behind with the payments and pressure was put on me to pay the money back. Eventually the loan sharks threatened that they would cause physical harm to both myself and my wife, Clair. My wife is pregnant, has a seven-month-old baby and knows nothing about my business activities.

  ‘Eventually, and in fear for our safety, I agr
eed to collect and deliver what I believed to be a quantity of cocaine on behalf of these loan sharks. I collected the drugs from a contact yesterday morning with directions to deliver it to Canvey Island. I was arrested with the drugs in my possession en route. The scales were with me to check the weight before delivery and were provided to me with the money, which I received the night before.

  ‘I do have a cocaine habit, which I have suffered from for the past two years. Any drug paraphernalia found at my home address relates to my habit. My wife has no knowledge of my habit or of any drugs that may have been found at my home address. The £31,420 found in my washing machine by police officers was cash given to me to pay for the cocaine once I had completed my delivery to Canvey Island. Other amounts of money found at my address relate to my wife’s savings, recent employment and monies I kept at home to pay for refurbishment material deliveries. I accept that the taser gun found at my home is mine. I found it in a car I bought a few months ago. I realised it was a prohibited weapon and so I put it on top of my fridge freezer. I had since forgotten about it.’

  Alvin knew that the penalty for possessing and conspiring to supply such a large amount of cocaine was likely to attract a sentence of approximately six years’ imprisonment. The very thought of losing his liberty after getting married, having a child and another on the way was too much to bear. Whatever it was going to take to get Alvin out of the predicament that he was in, he knew that he was going to have to do it. The problem Alvin had was that the police also knew the state of mind that he was in and the dilemma he faced.

  The evidence they had gathered had left them in no doubt whatsoever that Alvin was involved in Boshell’s death, but they needed leverage or some sort of trigger mechanism to get him to start talking. They had received intelligence that Alvin was going to be involved in the supply of a kilo of cocaine that morning and they knew that if they caught him with it that would provide the bargaining tool they needed. It was suggested to Alvin that if he was prepared to assist the police with their inquiries, they might be able to assist him with the jail term he now faced.

  At 2032 hrs on 2 April 2003, having already been charged with the possession of a kilo of cocaine with intent to supply, Alvin agreed to give an intelligence interview to DS Carter and DC Staff on the condition that the judge sentencing him for the cocaine would credit him for his co-operation. There is absolutely nothing wrong in law or police procedure with these types of agreements. However, the credibility of anybody giving evidence or intelligence in return for any type of reward has to be, I would suggest, at least questionable. It was explained to Alvin that he was not under caution, he was not under arrest and he was not under any obligation to say anything at all. He was then reminded that the charge he faced, in relation to the cocaine, was a serious one and it was likely to be dealt with by means of a lengthy prison sentence when he finally appeared in court. In plain English, Alvin had been told, ‘Help us or face six years inside.’

  DS Carter told Alvin, ‘There are a number of things that we can do to assist you in relation to that prison sentence that are governed by the judiciary. Basically, the judiciary agree that if anybody turns to assist the police and we go along to court and behind closed doors say to the judge, “This person has assisted us,” the judge is then duty-bound to reduce the sentence. That is written in the judiciary. Whatever help you give us, a decision will be made on what help we can give you, and there are a number of options open. But again, it’s down to you to decide whether you want to speak to us or not.’

  Would he serve six years in prison and risk losing everything? Or would he do what Boshell had done and give these people a load of bullshit intelligence? I cannot imagine Alvin agonising over the decision he was going to make for too long. He did refuse to talk initially because he didn’t want what he had to say to be recorded. After being reassured by the officers that the tapes would never be used, Alvin agreed to tell his story. Having read the transcripts of the interview tapes, it is apparent to me that Alvin was not concerned about the finer details of his story, his safety or the pursuit of justice. His main concern appears to have been that the authorities were going to try to seize his home under the Proceeds of Crime Act. This act was designed to show criminals that crime really does not pay, even if they are not caught initially. Any money or assets that a criminal cannot prove he has earned or funded legitimately can be seized by the courts at any time.

  It would have been fairly clear to the officers who arrested Alvin and found £31,420 in his washing machine, that the vast majority of his sizeable income was anything but legitimate. They could have quite easily claimed that his car and his home were purchased from the proceeds of crime.

  ‘What guarantees can be made that my wife will be able to keep the house?’ Alvin had asked.

  ‘No guarantees at the moment,’ DS Carter replied, ‘because I don’t know what you are going to tell us. The bottom line is you will go to court tomorrow and you will be remanded in custody. We can then get you out of prison on a production order so that we can sit down and talk in more depth. I can’t give you any promises whatsoever. We can only help you if you help us.’

  Before ending the interview, the detectives once more reminded Alvin that the degree of assistance they could offer him depended entirely upon the quality of information that he could give them. They told him to think about it and they would chat again at a later date.

  Alvin said that he would try to remember things but he was having difficulty because ‘that shit [cocaine] has fucked my head up half the time’.

  DS Carter concluded the intelligence interview by telling Alvin, ‘What might seem trivial to you might mean something important to us. It might be that we have a lot of intelligence about somebody and something you might say might make it all fall into place.

  ‘While we wouldn’t use you in evidence, unless you actually came fully on board and said, “Right, I am going to clear everything up that I have ever been involved in, and I am going to name these people”, then obviously you would go down the line of being what is commonly termed a supergrass. You would have to make statements and you would have to be prepared to stand up in court. Obviously, there are advantages to you that can be put in place. It’s been done many times; I was involved with Darren Nicholls, who was the supergrass on the Rettendon murder job.

  ‘He still went to prison for his involvement but he became a protected witness and is now living somewhere completely different. I’m not going to press you today because we now have something to work on and we need to check you are not spinning us a line to try to get something. There has got to be a trust thing between us.’

  Damon Alvin has never understood the word ‘trust’. His mind was already concentrating on how he was going to overcome the next hurdle between himself and the freedom he was prepared to do anything to secure. Alvin knew that he would have to start fabricating evidence that would make the story he had given in mitigation plausible.

  On Thursday, 3 April 2003, Alvin was remanded in custody to HMP Belmarsh, in south-east London, to await a hearing at Basildon Crown Court for sentencing.

  Two months later, Alvin was taken out of prison and transported to Gravesend police station, in Kent, where he was formally arrested for the murder of Dean Boshell. Alvin underwent two interviews, during which he refused to answer any other questions other than to confirm his name, address and date of birth. During a break between the two no-comment interviews, the officers said to Alvin, in the presence of his solicitor (who made notes on the subject), that they believed that Ricky Percival was responsible for the murder of Dean Boshell.

  In a police statement Alvin made later about this incident, he said, ‘They called Percival “the shooter” as opposed to “the murderer”. They went on to say that if I was prepared to tell them what had happened the night Boshell died, protection would be offered to my family and me. My wife came to the police station and it was explained to her what assistance could be given if I was in a po
sition to confirm what they suspected.

  ‘I was then allowed a period of time alone with my wife in a room divided by a screen. My wife and I discussed our options. I told her that I knew what had happened that night and that I was involved. My wife made it plain that she did not want to be away from her family; she was pregnant at the time and was scared. She left it up to me, however, to make the final decision. I was allowed the night to think about it. The following morning, I decided to remain silent because I was concerned for my safety, the safety of my wife, her family and mine.’

  Just before Alvin was returned to HMP Belmarsh, he was asked ‘off the record’ why Dean Boshell had been murdered. Without any hesitation Alvin had replied, ‘Because he was a liability.’ Alvin says now that while at Gravesend he was desperate to tell the police the full story regarding Boshell’s murder but he was too scared. Of whom, he does not say. Percival was on holiday in Spain and so one can only assume that Alvin feared the drug-dealing loan sharks to whom he supposedly owed £15,000.

  Before people are sentenced in these days of equality and justice, they are interviewed by the probation service so that a report detailing their personal circumstances can be presented to the judge. Those who are homeless, unemployed or otherwise in genuine need are generally sent to prison and people who have wives, children, a job and a home are often spared the indignity of incarceration. The thinking is that jailing a family man will cause his innocent wife and children to suffer. Society as a whole allegedly suffers if a taxpayer is jailed because the public purse has to fund his upkeep while he is inside. Those with nothing are decreed to be an existing strain on the limited resources of the welfare state and so sending them to jail apparently affects nobody. The fact that a person from a stable background should have thought long and hard about the consequences of his actions, before risking losing them, is generally ignored.